Byungki Hwang: Sounds of the Night Part 4, from the album Kayagum Masterpieces, 2001

In Seoul, the vibrant capital of South Korea the old and new, the raw and
polished, frequently rub together in odd juxtapositions. So a butcher’s
shop with pig trotters on the wet floor is perhaps to be expected in the
suburban street where the country’s most famous musician lives.

At 72, Byungki Hwang is Korea’s leading player of the traditional gayageum -- a
unique stringed instrument. As a young man he learned this wonderfully
evocative instrument and almost single-handedly rescued Korean court music and
folk songs from being lost after the battering his country took during the long
Japanese Colonial Period, the Second World War and finally the Korean War of
the early 50s.

Which might make you think the home of this living legend would be in one of Seoul’s
more swanky suburbs.

Of course inside the gates of Hwang’s home the atmosphere is very different.

Upstairs he enjoys a commanding view across low-rise apartments to the office towers of
modern Seoul. Here is a happy clutter of books and paperwork, and shopping bags
of CDs (Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida and Western classical albums among
them). Piled-up texts and manuscripts spill across the massive low table in the
centre of the room.

In a side room a dozen gayageum stand along the walls.

The Korean gayageum -- sometimes spelled kayagum -- is a wooden instrument almost
two metres long: it has at least 12 strings (sometimes as many as 21), moveable
frets on the soundboard, and the strings are plucked by the right hand while
the left depresses them to create microtones, bends of notes or gentle glides.

Tradition says it was based on an ancient Chinese instrument in the 6th
century but it is unique in north Asia, a point the professor is quick to make.

“The gayageum is of the zither family,” says Hwang as he sits on the floor with one resting over his crossed legs. “But it has its own special characteristics which make it different to the Japanese koto or Chinese instruments in the same family.

“The koto is played on the floor and the Chinese instruments are on a table, so they are outside the body of the musician. The gayageum is played with the fingernails and we hold it close to the body so it becomes part of the player’s flesh.

“In many ways the gayageum is the core of all Oriental string instruments. But of course Korean music is the most unknown music in the world,” he laughs.

Hwang -- of sprightly appearance and dry wit -- is unfortunately correct and his observation comes from long experience. Despite touring internationally he still, almost invariably, plays to predominantly Korean audiences, even at Carnegie Hall or in Paris.

The reason that Korean traditional music is largely unknown outside the country is because the West experienced Eastern music through its colonial contacts: Britain heard sitar music because the Empire dominated the Indian subcontinent; gamelan music from Indonesia made its way to Europe through Dutch colonists of the region; Chinese music seeped out through the cultural hotbed of Shanghai; the French discovered the music of Vietnam through their occupation of Indo-China . . .

But Korean music got no further than Japan, its colonial occupier.

“And it is one of the most difficult music for Western people, Korean gayageum music doesn’t use harmony -- and there can be very little ‘crossover
music’, as people call it, using Korean instruments.”

Where Ravi Shankar could take sitar music to Western audiences through collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin, Philip Glass and others (not to mention his friendship with George Harrison), gayageum music remains on the margins of Western
awareness.

That is a pity because the restful, earthy tone of the instrument, the dramatic ripple of fingers across the strings, and the stately sound of Korean court music melodies can be quite beguiling. When the heart and ears are open very little is lost in translation.

The fusion-gugak movement of the mid 80s brought traditional instruments like the gayageum and janggu (hourglass drum) together with electric bass, guitar and keyboards, but it is often bland and jazzy saxophone solos or MOR rock guitar can’t disguise the fact most fusion-gugak sounds emotionally empty -- not an accusation you could aim at Hwang’s intense music.

In 1951 when in his late teens and the Korean War was still raging across the peninsula, Hwang began studying gayageum in Busan (also written as Pusan). With the encouragement of some master musicians he started researching Korean traditional royal court and folk styles. Not an easy undertaking: the Western classical tradition had arrived in the late 19th century and Korean music was no longer taught in elementary schools.

Traditional music was associated with ruralism, poverty and the past, so Hwang encountered
indifference from audiences more keen to hear Western classical music which was associated with sophistication, modernity and knowledge.

“I tried to meet some of the Royal Court musicians, who were by then in their 50s, and found out as much from them as I could, and also found the music they could pass on.

“The court music was for upper class people and some was written down, but the folk traditional was purely oral. I had to learn it by ear from people who still played it.”

At the time Hwang started his studies the Korean National Assembly passed a bill establishing national music institutions to preserve the traditions of Korean music, and in 1959 the Seoul National University founded a college of music.

Hwang’s career ran parallel with these developments: he became a performer, archivist
and teacher; wrote music for films and television in the early 60s; toured internationally; and when he was only 26 rather daringly began to compose for gayageum.

“In former times there was no concept of a composer or composition, gayageum music was not ‘owned’ by anyone so no one put their name to a composition.

“I am the first who composed for the gayageum by using written manuscripts and Western notation. My colleagues were surprised and probably a little embarrassed,” he laughs.

His first composition Forest created a new genre of Korean music, ch’angjak kukak or “newly-composed Korean traditional music”. Later he experimented with changes in tuning and used unconventional playing techniques. Today his once-controversial works are part of the standard repertoire for gayageum students.

Hwang is considered a living treasure in his homeland although -- despite touring internationally, being a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington in 1965 and visiting professor of Korean music at Harvard in 1985 -- he and Korean music remain unknown by most Westerners.

Yet he is an amusing and articulate advocate for this meditative, restful and often sublime music. He still tours and his recent collection The Best of Korean Gayageum (Arc Music) has international distribution.

Korean gayageum music may not be familiar in the way Japanese koto, Indian raga or Javanese gamelan music have become, but Hwang is an acclaimed master -- and a local hero to gayageum makers.

“When I began to learn gayageum in 1950,”
he says, his eyes glittering as he anticipates his punchline, “there
were only about a dozen gayageum sold in a year. There are 10,000 nowadays.”

And at that Professor Byungki Hwang allows himself a very broad smile.

This article first appeared in the February 2008 issue of Songlines

By Graham Reid, posted Nov 21, 2010

Topics

Share It

Your Comments

George Klales - May 25, 2009

I lived in korea for three years as a peace corps volunteer. During that time I studied the language and culture and learned some of the pop songs of the time (1971-1974). Regrettably, I never learned much of the traditional music. Recently I have been listening to kayagum on youtube and I find it very beautiful and restful. I would like to buy or build a kayagum and learn to play.
I would give my right arm to study with someone like professor Hwang. Fortunately he has a legacy that will last through his students and manuscripts. The fact that so many kayagums are made each year also ensures that an art that surely would have died, now lives on for those who craft these instruments.
This article is very interesting but I find it strange that Professor Hwang's age is listed as being 62 and yet his study of the kayagum started in 1951 in his late teens.

Graham of Elsewhere - May 25, 2009

ha! 62!!! i can spell but not add, i've made the correction -- he was of course 72.
thanks
G

Post Comment

*required fields

Name *

Email *

Spam prevention *

Please enter the 3 letter code below. This helps us prevent spam. Code is not case-sensitive

Comment *

We welcome comments provided they have something to contribute. Please note that all links will be created using the nofollow attribute. This is a spam free zone. HTML is stripped from comments, but BBCode is allowed.

Related Articles

Take a deep breath because here’s a partial list of the instruments German multi-tasker Stephan Micus has played on recent albums: Bavarian zither, tin whistle, sattar, steel guitar, Japanese... > Read more

Originally released in 1967 -- the Beatles' Norwegian Wood which used sitar was on Rubber Soul, released late '65, and folk guitarist Davy Graham employed Indian tunings prior to that -- this album... > Read more

More from this section

Already tipped to be one of the highlights at next year's New Zealand Womad in Taranaki, this choir of Haitian ancestry certainly sing up a powerful sentiment (see clip).
But this isn't an easy... > Read more

Tom Ze was one of the stars of Brazil's Tropicalia movement in the late Sixties and his edgy music and approaches to song structure and instrumentation was collected by David Byrne for the Best of... > Read more

New Elsewhere

Just as Memphis, Liverpool, Jamaica,
Iceland and Sweden were not in the sightlines of pop music before
great artists emerged from there, it's a fair bet 10 years ago no one
would have put money... > Read more

Rochelle Bright has enjoyed one of the better views in New Zealand while writing plays such as her acclaimed Daffodils . . . and the impending The
Deliberate Disappearance of My Friend, Jack... > Read more